Stephen Mitchell's Journey

Stephen Mitchell is a young man without a place in the world. He works endless hours on his family's struggling farm, but farming is in his blood only in the sense that he despises it. With little schooling and less confidence, he watches from the sidelines as other young people in town find their paths while he remains frozen in awkward silence, too self-conscious to speak to anyone his own age, let alone to look a young lady in the eye. Then, almost by accident, Stephen stumbles into a lecture at the Chautauqua camp meeting. Something in those words reaches him in a way nothing ever has before. He takes one small step toward improving himself. Then another. What follows is the quiet, hard-won story of a young man learning that transformation doesn't require grand gestures, only the courage to begin. Pansy crafts a tender portrait of loneliness and the radical act of believing one might deserve something more. For readers who cherish stories of quiet transformation and the ache of being young and lost.